by Lucy Lambert
But the fresh air helped alleviate that sensation. The fresh air and my inability to think about anything but what was going to happen next.
“As you can see, there isn’t really anything to see,” Jeff started, “Now how about we go back downstairs and start some tea…?”
“Kiss me, Jeff,” I said, looking up into his face.
I’d wanted to save myself until we were married, like was proper. But wasn’t potentially saving his life far more important than some tradition of modesty?
I wanted him to take me up in his arms, to crush me against him. My body ached for it, every fiber and nerve seeming to tug me closer to him.
“Ellie, are you certain you’re feeling…”
“Kiss me! I need you to kiss me!” I said. I began shaking, the frustration of unrealized desire boiling over within me. How could he be so blind?
His eyes took in my face, travelling down my neck to my heaving chest and then back up. He swallowed heavily, his Adam’s apple sliding beneath the stubbled skin on his throat.
Without further prodding from me, he grabbed me up and pulled me close, his arms encircling my waist and his fingers grabbing at the back of my dress.
We’d kissed before. But never like this. I didn’t know a kiss could be like this. His mouth burned against mine, his lips pressing against mine with urgency and desire.
I slipped my hands in under his jacket, my whole body trembling with anticipation, fear, desire, and a dozen other sensations. Part of me couldn’t believe what was happening, another part exalted in the knowledge that it was working. He couldn’t deny me anymore, he couldn’t go over to the war. Not after this.
His lips left mine, then, leaving my mouth tender and almost numb from the force of his passion. Then he kissed my neck, his lips soft on my skin and his stubble rough.
My body writhed against his, our hips rubbing. I felt him, then. Felt his desire for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about how hard it pressed against me.
“I need you, Jeff…” I said, “Stay with me. Be with me…”
“You’re so beautiful, Eleanor. You taste so good… and the way you smell… it maddens me!” he said.
His hands dipped lower, cupping my bottom through my dress. He kneaded my flesh, pulling me with greater urgency against his desire. I don’t think I could have stopped if I’d tried. Even if I’d wanted to.
Unable to help myself, I glanced back over my shoulder out the window. Still plenty of light left. Plenty of time to do what needed to be done.
As though he could read my thoughts, Jeff scooped me up in his arms. His hair was all disheveled, his face flushed to match mine. He carried me over to the bed and set me down on it. The frame creaked beneath our weight, and the pillow cushioned my head.
“My buttons… Can you help me with them?” I said, rolling onto my side to show the row of them holding my dress closed. Jeff undid them, his trembling fingers fumbling several times. When he finished, I lay back down. Jeff sat on the side of the bed, his legs hanging off the side, his hands on either side of me.
Never breaking eye contact with him, I slid the straps of my dress down to reveal my breasts. The air and the excitement had my nipples erect, like little nubs.
“My God, Ellie. You’re so beautiful…”
More heat flowed through me at the compliment, and a nervous smile spread across my face. I’d never shown another living person my naked body before. I needed him to like me.
He looked at me for what felt like a long time. Long enough for me to feel the beginning tendrils of fear. Did he not like me? Was there something wrong?
“Jeff…”
Before I could get another word out, he reached out, his fingers shaking. I sucked in a breath through my teeth when his fingertips brushed my breast. Slowly, his hand enveloped it, my stiffened nipple pressing into his palm. He squeezed, gently. It was enough to make me gasp.
Leaning over, he kissed me again, his fingers squeezing my flesh with greater insistence. This time, when his lips slipped down from mine, they encircled my other nipple. It was an incredible sensation. Warm and wet. And when he sucked lightly on me, my back arched up. How was it possible to feel this good? Why did people not want others to do this? Did they hate the thought of people making each other feel this way?
I knew that neither of us had ever been with someone before. Not like this. Our inexperience showed, and I worried that I might not be doing something right. Nervous, I reached out for Jeff, wanting to touch him and make him feel this good, too.
But he stopped my hand.
“I love you, Ellie,” he said.
“I love you, too, Jeff. So much. Won’t you let me show you?”
But then Jeff stood up. Cold fear rushed through me, then. I had done something wrong! He was leaving!
“Jeff… What’s wrong?” I said.
He didn’t leave, though. He went over to the window and drew the inner curtains, leaving the heavy drapes open so that the sunlight could still make its way in.
Then he disrobed, shrugging off his jacket and folding it neatly over the back of his desk chair. He did the same with his undershirt and his trousers. I got a hitch in my throat when he slid out of his shorts, his desire finally free/ My stomach tightened at the sight of it, and I felt slickness between my thighs.
He was a well-built man. Broad shoulders, a chest deep enough to betray his athletic nature. My eyes drank in the clean, masculine lines of his body. I hoped he liked the feminine curves of mine. It was quite the contrast, his hard lines to my soft ones.
Climbing back onto the bed, he lay on his side beside me, his hand cupping my breast again before shifting up to gently stroke my cheek. It was like fanning flames.
When he began helping me the rest of the way out of my dress, folding it over top of his clothes, I again worried about doing things the wrong way. At the same time, desire and anticipation thrummed through me.
He moved down to the foot of the bed, gently parting my legs. I squirmed at the sight of him. God, that slickness was getting worse. And now he could see it! I had to fight the urge to put my hands over my nakedness.
“I’ve thought about being with you like this for so long, Ellie,” he said, “You have no idea how many nights and days I spent thinking about it. About how you might look. And do you know what? You’re far more beautiful, more perfect, than in my most intense fantasies.”
I don’t know if he said that because he saw my nervousness, or just needed to tell me. Whatever the reason, it worked. I relaxed, insofar as I could. That urge to hide myself from his eyes disappeared, replaced by the need to feel him there, inside me.
Slowly, he slid up over me, supporting himself on his hands. When he smiled, I couldn’t help but smile back. When he kissed me, I couldn’t help but let my lips part against his.
When I felt him against my opening, I couldn’t help but let him slip inside me.
My body stretched to accommodate him, the pain of it sweet. It was a good thing I was so slick. He pressed against my maidenhead for a moment. Our kiss grew more passionate.
He thrust forward, taking my flower. I was lost in the decadent pleasures of physical intimacy. I could feel his heat and his hardness. The more I felt it, the deeper it plunged into me, the slicker I became. I could feel his hot breaths of exertion. When I slipped my hands down to his bared bottom, I could feel his muscles flexing with the effort of it.
Without having to be told, I wrapped my legs around his back, locking my ankles.
Our bodies writhed together as we explored each other. Sometimes his lips found mine, sometimes they found the soft skin of my throat. But always, the heat and hardness of his desire was deep within me. I wanted him to get lost in me, to never leave.
When he began to slow, I used my legs to urge him back into me.
“Ellie…” he said, his teeth gritted, his eyes scrunched shut.
His voice just urged me on. I pulled him back in, harder and faster. My grip on him grew tighter,
and something deep inside was building. Every thrust brought me closer and closer to it.
Jeff forced himself all the way into me, then, crying out wordlessly. He filled me, pouring his seed deep inside. The heat of it put me over the edge.
If the swirling of sensations before had been a storm, this was a maelstrom. I couldn’t help crying out as well. Dimly, I knew that I’d locked my legs around him, holding him buried all the way inside me as his body jerked in the throes of his ultimate pleasure.
Simultaneously, we both relaxed, Jeff rolling off me and collapsing at my side. Our bodies trembled. My hand sought his, and our fingers intertwined. I stared up at the boards making up his ceiling without really seeing them.
What had that been, at the end, that incredible concentration of sensations and pleasures?
But I couldn’t think about that. Not then. It wasn’t the time for it.
“Don’t go over. Tell the draft board you can’t. Please, Jeff, for me,” I said, not looking at him. If I looked, I would tear up. I could already feel my eyes moistening. Why did I have this urge to cry? I felt the exact opposite of sad. What reason was there for tears? Had I really been that overwhelmed?
He squeezed my hand. “I have to. I can’t back out of this.”
A fat tear rolled down out of my eye, making its way towards my ear. Jeff intercepted it, wiping it away with the ball of his thumb.
“You don’t have to. You can back out…”
“I can’t, Ellie. I have to do this. I have to.”
Chapter 5
Sunday came and went so quickly that I hardly remembered the sermon the minister read at the service that day. I'd attended that day with mother, Marie, and Jeff. He'd dressed in the same suit as he'd worn to win me back on Saturday. It was a little dusty on the legs from all our walking, with an almost invisible wrinkle along one side under his arm from when I'd clung to him.
No one seemed to notice, though. The older men patted Jeff on the back, offering him cigars. Many of the women cooed over him, touching his arm or standing close to whisper words of encouragement.
While Jeff laughed and shook hands and generally basked in his sudden rise to fame, no one noticed the women sitting in the back row of pews. The church had twelve rows of the long, deep-stained benches. Hymnals (many in German) rested along small shelves along the back of each pew for the occupants of the people sitting behind it to use.
I squinted to see into the shadows. It was Shelley Clarkson and another woman, older. Shelley had a black dress on, as well as a dark bonnet. Shelley had a sharp face, with a pointed nose that always reminded me of a bird's beak. Her lips were bloodless, and she had her hands clenched together into a tight ball on the backrest of the pew in front of her.
The older woman had the same nose, and the beginnings of jowls. Shelley's mother, I'd have wagered. She rubbed her daughter's back as they both looked at Jeff.
Had Shelley's brother been given such a send-off before he'd made his way on to the battlefields in Belgium?
I looked back to Jeff. An old man I didn't recognize, a horseshoe shaped wisp of hair clinging tenaciously to his mottled scalp, shook his hand and said something I couldn't make out. Had that same men said similar words to Shelley's brother?
I couldn't even remember her brother's name.
***
We sat together on the small wicker chairs set up on Jeff's mother's porch, watching the sun go down on his final day as a civilian.
"I have to leave at five tomorrow morning," he said, "The train for Quebec departs at quarter after."
The train station was only about ten minutes or so down Victoria Street from his mother's home. The tracks passed about a block distant from my house. The early morning trains tried not to sound their horns, but the rumble of cars and the rattle of steel wheels on the track still woke me sometimes.
"Training will be a few weeks, then it's off to Halifax and the Atlantic! I hope I get a berth on the Mauretania. It's faster than the Olympic."
I nodded, looking down at his feet. I found myself wishing he'd board White Star's Olympic instead. It would take a bit longer to get over to England. A little extra time for the war to end before he got anywhere near the German guns and bombs and artillery.
I also could fight off a sudden jealousy. When I'd met Jeff, he'd never really been interested in travel. He'd been like his mother: content to stay right in the Waterloo region. He'd never voiced any opinion on the big ocean liners. And he got to go on one.
I remembered reading about the Titanic after it launched. Unchallenged luxury, size, and safety. The last part, of course, hadn't really proved true. But I'd always held onto the desire to see it. Apparently, the Olympic was almost exactly the same.
But jealousy was something that I knew I shouldn't be feeling at that moment. So I watched the shadows stretch and deepen along Victoria Street, the traffic getting lighter so that I could distinguish individual engines and the clop-clop noise the horses made.
"Ellie?"
"I wish you'd stay," I said.
It was impossible, though. Jeff had made no attempt to see the draft board, had lodged no disagreement with them. If he stayed now, the boys from the 118 Battalion would show up at his door and throw him in their military prison.
He'd live, at least, I thought.
Jeff reached for my hands, but I withdrew them, clasping them in my lap. The cool night breeze ruffled the feathers in my bonnet as I looked down at my clenched fingers.
You're being unfair, I said to myself. He's going to war, and there's nothing you can do about it, I continued, and you're going to deny him something as simple as holding your hand?
So I reached out and took his instead. His fingers curled around mine, holding them tightly. His grip trembled. Was it excitement? Fear? Both?
I thought more about my behavior towards him for the last few days. God! I'd been such a selfish boor!
"Jeff!" I said, leaning towards him so that the feet of my wicker chair creaked against the porch.
"Yes?"
The front door opened, and Marie stuck her head through. She'd changed from her Sunday dress and had removed her hat. She wore a modest and thick nightgown, grey in the dying light.
"Jeffrey, come in! You need your rest! Eleanor, dear, thank you for keeping him company. But I think you'd agree with me, yes?"
"Yes," I said, a heat rising to my cheeks as my eyes swung back and forth between mother and son.
I wanted so desperately to just let it all out, to tell him I was sorry and that I loved him and that I was being selfish. But already Jeff stood. I gripped his hands tighter for a moment, then let his fingers slide through mine.
"I will write often, Ellie! And I expect the same of you!" Jeff said.
Despite the presence of his mother, he touched my cheek. His hand trembled, and felt so hot against me. He kissed my forehead, and I closed my eyes as I felt the warmth of his lips press my skin.
"You're right, mother. I do need my rest," Jeff said, standing in the doorway beside Marie.
I balled my hands together in my lap, clenching them to keep Jeff from seeing the way I shook. I couldn't quite look at him; every time I tried to lift my eyes to meet his, a pressure built behind them and I had to let them drop down again.
"Ellie? I'll see you again."
My heart burned inside me. I could feel the empty space he'd left there. That space he'd have filled with, "And I love you," had Marie not been in the doorway.
I wanted to reciprocate, but a bashful heat rose up my neck and cheeks.
So I said, "Travel safely, and be careful!"
He smiled, then disappeared inside the town house. It took me a moment to realize that Marie still stood there, watching me.
"Come have supper with me again tomorrow," she said.
"Of course! That would be lovely," I replied.
It wouldn't, I knew. But I smiled at her anyway. I just wanted to run home and bury myself under the covers on my bed. Marie would just
remind me of Jeff, and that he wasn't here with me.
But it would be rude not to accept.
Satisfied, Marie went back inside, the sound of her feet on the stairs muffled. I knew she was right. Jeff needed his rest. If the trip exhausted him too much, he might make a mistake over there.
I kept thinking about poor Shelley Clarkson and her brother. Had they tired that boy out, with their endless goodbyes and get-togethers celebrating his service?
If I was tired at work, I might get my finger pricked by the sewing machine. If Jeff got tired on the front… Well, it didn’t bear thinking about.
So, despite my strong desire to stay there with him well into the night, fighting off sleep to claim just a few more moments with him, I stood, the feet of the wicker chair scraping against the porch.
“I should let you have your rest,” I said, looking at him. I wanted to memorize every feature of his face, from the delicate, smooth skin under his eyes to the way his bottom lip was slightly larger than the upper one.
At the same time, I wanted to turn away, to hurry down those steps and back home. Every second I spent standing there with him made it harder to tear myself away. Some evil little voice within couldn’t help but to suggest that this might be the last time I saw him.
“Won’t you stay, just a little longer?” Jeff said, taking my hand gently but firmly. The insistence of the touch made me think about the other day, up on his bed. My mouth went dry at the thought, and heat once more flushed up into my cheeks.
“I shouldn’t…”
“Yes, you should. Come back inside. The air has a bit of a nip to it,” Jeff said, already reaching for the door latch.
“If your mother hears, she’ll be angry. Do you really want her angry with the both of us on this last night we have?”